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I don't think I'd live in a revolving building. Once, while at a party in the revolving "The View Restaurant" in NYC, I put my drink down on a counter. When I reached over to to get my drink 10 minutes later I saw that it had moved 10 feet behind me.

However, they need not quit their countries to go work in Dubai. This is not "slave labour".

Are you sure about that? Here on the Rock, we have quite a few members of the European Union who are working for wages that ordinary residents would consider "slave wages". Some people are willing to sacrifice quite a lot to be able to send money "back home" to support a spouse and children. If you were faced with a choice of you and your family starving, or you going to a country such as Saudi Arabia where you would earn what in your home country might be considered a fortune but in context, is slave labour, what would you do?

And you also need to realise that not all people are treated equally in SA. If you're not a member of the prevailing Muslim sect, and happen to be born in SA by accident of birth, you have to take what employment opportunities you can get. And the way it pans out, it's pretty much slave labour.

Hello?

My guess is that Physicsguy is more savvy when it comes to living in SA than you are.

"...health will finally be seen not as a blessing to be wished for, but as a human right to be fought for." Kofi Annan

Nymphomaniac: a woman as obsessed with sex as an average man. Mignon McLaughlin

HIV is certainly character-building. It's made me see all of the shallow things we cling to, like ego and vanity. Of course, I'd rather have a few more T-cells and a little less character. Randy Shilts

If you were faced with a choice of you and your family starving, or you going to a country such as Saudi Arabia where you would earn what in your home country might be considered a fortune but in context, is slave labour, what would you do?

This is something that makes it even more abhorrent. They go with the promise of making money to send back to their impoverished families, but they end up getting paid a fraction of what they were promised.

Ooops... yeah, I knew that. Consider it a brain-fart on my part. After all, it's 2:20am in my part of the world.

I've read quite a bit on what the conditions are like in Dubai. And yes, it really is abhorrent that rich nations prey on the poor of the world to construct and maintain their lavish live-styles. Makes me sick.

"...health will finally be seen not as a blessing to be wished for, but as a human right to be fought for." Kofi Annan

Nymphomaniac: a woman as obsessed with sex as an average man. Mignon McLaughlin

HIV is certainly character-building. It's made me see all of the shallow things we cling to, like ego and vanity. Of course, I'd rather have a few more T-cells and a little less character. Randy Shilts

"...health will finally be seen not as a blessing to be wished for, but as a human right to be fought for." Kofi Annan

Nymphomaniac: a woman as obsessed with sex as an average man. Mignon McLaughlin

HIV is certainly character-building. It's made me see all of the shallow things we cling to, like ego and vanity. Of course, I'd rather have a few more T-cells and a little less character. Randy Shilts

I like Dubai as a place to just go and relax in the sun. But you are always conscience that this Disneyesque town is built on a large, exploited (sub) working class.

I don't like the building. Fine for maybe a hotel, but I wouldn't want to live there. Plus the skyline in Dubai sucks, unless you're into construction cranes, sand and the odd collection of let's-try-and-out-do-our-neighbor buildings.

I'm with Betty. I can hardly watch the thing spin on video, let alone have to live in it. Once the elevator reaches your floor (did the man say 80 stories!), do you have to run in circles, chasing down your front door as it spins wildly? Great for an amusement park ride - not as a home.

Dubai is just over the top everything has to be the biggest or the tallest or whatever.Actually I think a lot of it is just tacky like Vegas without the gambling.I agree with PhysicsGuy and Ann about the workers there.The last time I went to Dubai I was only there 5 days but I saw two construction workers be hit by cars on the road.They drive around in these massive SUV's at crazy speeds and like I said,I saw these 2 workers get hit as they were trying to cross the road.And no one stopped or anything.Because I think in places like UAE,Saudi,Qatar they just don't see these people as human.They're like ants or something that just do the menial labour.

Isn't there a lot of human trafficking with Albanian prostitutes in London? Amazing how human degradation happens not only in a developing country with unscrupulous business practices (not uncommon particularly, however unfortunate) but also in pillars of haute civilization.

I know that there used to be unsavory trafficking of Chinese women in NYC, but I think it's been a good decade since I've run into a really nasty new story on this so maybe it's changed.

I can't think of a single economy in an already developed country that didn't exploit mass amounts of people to get there. However, I'd still put sexual slavery pretty far at the top of nastiness.

Isn't there a lot of human trafficking with Albanian prostitutes in London?

Well women from all over Eastern Europe really.The police and foreign office have been cracking down on that thought the last few years I think so it's not as big a problem as it was in say the first few years of 2000.I think parts of France and Germany still have a lot of problems with trafficking and women being exploited.It's difficult in the EU because everyone can move around freely without applying for visas or anything.So I guess it's hard to work out who has been forced to go somewhere.

Places like Dubai I think it's just a huge contrast between the people who have rights,money,power(like male citizens)and the rest who don't(like immigrants and women).They treat women like dirt or possessions and their human rights record is disgusting.But no one does anything about it because they have something everyone else needs(oil etc)I've never really understood why people like going there for holidays,to me it just seemed so artificial.I guess some people like that though.

However, semantically, I don't consider this "slave labour" which to me at least means the law of the land allows slavery. Half the abuses in these countries seem to be a bad combination of capitalists/gangsters and ignorant people being abused by their own countrymen and then again the companies using the "guest worker".

If you wanna call these gross labour practices "slave labour" then, OK, and note they exist around the world and its not easy to avoid "benefiting" or being implicit in their continuation.

There are two sides to every story - and even some human rights activists acknowledge the regrettable transitionary period of workers joining the global economy at the lowest level and least power sometimes results in improved standard of life for developing countries....

Having just read several books about the Atlantic Slave Trade, I see parrallels from then, to now, but personally don't define this indentured service as 21st century slave labour.

But if you want to use that term to call attention to the gross Human Rights abuses, ok fine with me!

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“From each, according to his ability; to each, according to his need” 1875 K Marx

This is something that makes it even more abhorrent. They go with the promise of making money to send back to their impoverished families, but they end up getting paid a fraction of what they were promised.

In the Atlantic Slave Trade, different African tribes and "nations" were constantly warring and capturing each other. Prisoners of war were shackled and sold to middlemen who kept them shackled in the dungeons on the coast, then on the ship, all the way to the destination. In some New World places they had seasoning camps - a year or two of torture to break the captures humanity and make them slaves. All of this was legal. Soviet Gulags.Nazi Concentration Camps.etc etc etc.

There is forced trafficing of humans for the sex industry nowadays.

On the other hand, who's promising these "guest workers" the great futures (agents in both countries), and why are they "believing" it?

A few years ago, it was revealed that WalMarts in the USA were being cleaned by indentured servants, as well...

When i've made Anti WalMart comments in these threads, some people have told me to shut up and they love Wal Mart or, rather, its the only place they can afford to shop.

Who is "enslaving" whom and how....

« Last Edit: July 20, 2009, 05:06:45 AM by mecch »

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“From each, according to his ability; to each, according to his need” 1875 K Marx

The exploitation of migrant labour is all relative. Most of this exploited labour in the Gulf states comes from the Indian subcontinent. Are their conditions in the Gulf states any worse than if they ended up living in a Mumbai slum, or if they were a six-year-old girl in India mining mica, for an absolute pittance, in order that we in the West can have glitter in our lipstick, a pane of glass in our cooker / stove that isn't going to shatter when it gets hot, or cheap microchips in our PCs that don't cease to function when they heat up?

Don't get me wrong, I am defending nothing; but it is easy to condemn and forget that we all have a part to play in this filthy business. Some of us just happen to have the luxury of being able to export our filthy business to where we can conveniently pretend it doesn't exist - or that it is all OK as long as they have the perverse notion of 'freedom' that we impose with our economic warfare, bombs, depleted-uranium-tipped armaments and white phosphorous.

New York built some gimmicky Post Modern stuff - like the ATT (now SONY) where I thoroughly enjoyed the lobby's coolness in the dog days of August. New Fangled "cities" like Dubai and Shenzhen can't really be compared to old metropolis's - they are something different to be appreciated for their own weirdness. Actually, there is something a bit Los Angeles + Vegas about Dubai.

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“From each, according to his ability; to each, according to his need” 1875 K Marx

There is a single family dwelling on San Marin Drive in Novato. It is round, single story and rotates on a turntable powered from it's own wind generator which was built in the early 1950's. It appears to be still turning. Have the best dayMichael

I can't help but think these new places would suffer terribly - eventually, if not right away - from rising damp. But, saying that, I suppose it's a natural progression from barge houses. Might be the wave of the future (pardon the pun) for when global warming decimates coastal habitation.

"...health will finally be seen not as a blessing to be wished for, but as a human right to be fought for." Kofi Annan

Nymphomaniac: a woman as obsessed with sex as an average man. Mignon McLaughlin

HIV is certainly character-building. It's made me see all of the shallow things we cling to, like ego and vanity. Of course, I'd rather have a few more T-cells and a little less character. Randy Shilts